Station Eleven

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, 336 pages

I remember hearing a lot of buzz about this book- and then, nothing.  But I finally got around to reading it, and I enjoyed it.  The plot is this: a super flu happens and most of the world dies; this is the interlocking stories of a few of the survivors and a few of the non-survivors.  The stories span a wide range of years and include a number of voices, so it's up to the reader to keep them all straight.  One of the voices is that of Kirsten, a young woman who was just a girl when the flu hit, and years later, she is a member of a traveling theater troupe, who offer Shakespeare to the post-apocalyptic communities.  I love the idea of art being essential- the troupe use a Star Trek line as their motto, which really sums up the whole book: "Because survival is insufficient."